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Technology Stocks : PRI Automation (PRIA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam Citron who wrote (1006)	9/13/2000 2:46:29 PM
From: Ian@SI	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1214

Sam, Welcome back to the world of Semi Equipment! It's been awhile. Some of the information that you've asked for is in the conference call replay available until Sunday at 1 888 203 1112 Passcode 609892. Realplayer replay is available at pria.com for about a month. The interview with the CFO, Cosmo Trapani is even more informative. URLs for 2 extracts are in my posts last night - numbers 996-1001 on this thread. That said, I'll do my best to answer your questions. ++++++++++= Has PRI released any aggregate stats on quantity of Turbostocker 300 orders or deliveries? I've not seen precise numbers. In the warning conference call, Factory Systems Division revenues for the most recent 3Qs (these were precisely defined during the Q&A) were $11M, $26M and $34M. My notes aren't precise, so I'm not absolutely certain that those numbers are Revenues rather than Orders. In the last earnings conference call, a precise answer re 300mm wasn't given but it was ballparked at about 10% of bookings with substantial growth expected during calendar year 2001. PRI would not seem to be alone in overestimating speed of 300-mm transformation. What is present status of this general transition and what factors are holding it back? Actually, its the media and the analysts that are overstating the speed of 300mm adoption. The Equipment guys have uniformly been more conservative. Several factors have delayed the transition. 1. Yields. Only this year was Infineon able to get the same number of good chips from a 300mm wafer as from a 200mm wafer. Obviously that figure is now much improved but I suspect that there was lots of room for improvement. 2. Lithography. No production 300mm tools available. The lithography vendors weren't getting the orders and are making money hand over fist on 200 mm tools. Their development efforts began much later than most other tool vendors. 3. Consortiums. Past transitions tended to be one or 2 brave companies pioneering. Remember that it was the earliest pioneers that got hit with the most arrows. For 300mm, we started with 3 consortiums doing the 300mm R&D. This has been a much more thorough approach with industry wide standards becoming the result. 4. Cost. Most companies had excess clean room space in their fabs and have been able to add capacity without building new fabs. Compatible capacity was added more inexpensively than screwing around with new tools, processes, vendors, etc. For most vendors, the option of adding more capacity to existing lines, fabs has been exhausted. Number of greenfield fabs has increased this year and will continue to increase sharply next year. I believe that some of the DRAM makers still have some shell space available. So the long answer to the short question is that cost and other feasible alternatives have held back 300mm transition progress. Last that I saw is that TSMC will begin offering 300mm wafer starts this year. This could put substantial pressure on others to ramp up their own efforts. Again, welcome aboard. I suspect that this is going to be the easiest triple you've ever had. And I doubt that it will take a year to get there. Best regards, Ian.